


What Else is New

by Firelight_and_Rain



Series: Happily Ever After Or Something Like It [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Epilogue, Gen, Major Spoilers, Recreational Drinking, past Agent Texas/Church
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 13:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6154934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't leave many loose ends, but even he couldn't do anything about love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Else is New

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know anything about Judaism and I'm really sorry about that.  
> This started because I wanted to untangle some of my emotions about Wash and Epsilon, actually.  
> Uhm, also, major angst. If that's not your thing, probably don't read this.  
> [If the formatting's a pain, please tell me].

It was only when they’d mostly escaped the media circus and were preparing to integrate back into their windfall lives back on the Republic of Chorus - except for Carolina, who’d gone back with them only because they’d expected it, unquestioningly, because she wanted to be a good team leader and something more and check up on Kimball and Grey (Vanessa and Emily), because she wanted to do right by Wash, but she and Tex had been offered a military oversight position and she was of more than half a mind to return and take it, to make her experiences and Tex’s mean something - that Tucker brought up his idea. Sim troopers. Juvenile jarheads, all of them, but she was thinking more and more that they had more humanity left than any of the Freelancers had been allowed to cling to.  
“We should give Church a funeral,” Lavernius said resolutely, after Wash had found them, after the Reds had drifted off with some half-assed mockery. Carolina figured that everyone but Sarge could see that this tenuous peace was the final, echoing death knell of the whole Red versus Blue gimmick. Yes, there’d be hardships ahead for Chorus and for them individually, but now that Lavernius held the highest authority, now that Doc and Donut seemed more interested in playing house and playing soldier, now that there wasn’t really anything stopping Grif from defecting - and now that the “Blue”s no longer needed the “Red”s.  
What a strange way for an army to fail, she thought, but infinitely preferable to what had happened to the Freelancers.  
Caboose was nodding in agreement almost as soon as the words had left Tucker’s mouth. And Wash didn’t say anything, but Tucker wasn’t going to take his silence as disagreement. It was Wash. Carolina found herself nodding in agreement. For Epsilon. “Tex?”  
“Yeah. We should do that.”  
And that was when Wash about jumped out of his skin. By the time he’d recovered and stopped reflexively pointing his rifle at Tex’s avatar, Carolina had fully pieced together the potential pitfalls of abruptly introducing two people who, as far as she knew, had last met while trying to kill each other. And Tex had, actually. Died, that is.  
“Hey, Washington.” Superficially a greeting, but the little avatar’s words had the threat of violence under them. Never mind that Beta was no more capable of beating the hell out of Wash than Tucker had been of tackling Epsilon. Half of the sim trooper’s original fear of Carolina had just been a Pavlovian response to their memories of Tex. Or so Epsilon had assured, quite logically. Maybe he’d been trying to make her feel better. Though his memories of Freelancer must have been patchy if he’d assumed that being called a shark-woman and whatever else they’d come up with was exactly something she’d take as an insult.  
“Hello, Texas. Uh, Carolina, why is she with you?”  
“Because, Wash, we don’t like the U.N.S.C., and Tex deserves to have this funeral for Church. Also, I could use the help with my armor.” She wished that she’d sounded bitchy on that last part, instead of just sad. Damn, being a Freelancer felt like getting old. Past time for them all to get actual lives. Fun as being a Knight-Errant was, though maybe fun wasn’t the right word for it, something about her fight with Sharkface had knocked the enjoyment out of it for her.  
Somehow Wash managed to look awkward while wearing full body armor. It was a talent. He grunted something that might have been an apology or a white flag or just incomprehensible mumbling in Carolina’s general direction.  
It would have to do for now.

Vanessa didn’t bat an eyelash at Tucker’s somewhat garbled request, delivered in no way a fitting tone for funeral arrangements. Tucker talked to her like he expected her - not compliance, but cooperation. Vanessa suggested a spot not so very far from Crash Site Bravo; a beautiful place that Carolina and Epsilon had traveled through not long after the start of their partnership. Because Epsilon’s only home that he’d ever wanted was made from the people around him instead of a building or a place, Carolina agreed to the suggestion, and everyone else followed suit.  
They didn’t advertise Church’s funeral. Though inarguably the hero that the galactic media did dubious honor in their coverage of the shame and defeat of the Director and Hargrove, A.I.s weren’t really people. There were questions they couldn’t answer, could never have answered, about Church. And their best moments - those actions committed by Church and his strange, fractious, borderline criminal little family - were nothing like they’d look from the outside, from Actual People’s point of view, half the time more frantic course corrections than any noble scheme. And while the misguided hero worship couldn’t last forever, none of them wanted Church’s memory brought up next to Hargrove’s. They still loved him more than that.  
So even though for once they should have felt secure in wearing their hearts on their sleeves, they kept the funeral private.  
Blue team problems.

Vanessa let them borrow a small plane to fly out to the site - said, at least this way Jensen won’t have the opportunity to crash it. Carolina tried to remember every lesson she’d ever bothered out of 479’er and flew the plane herself. Wash sat in the copilot’s seat, making no idle conversation, keeping a weather eye on the jungle below and ahead, periodically looking back into the main compartment of the plane with a warm, bemused curve to his lips.  
Carolina couldn’t claim to understand why Wash found his team’s antics adorable. As attached as she’d somehow become to the sim troopers, they still gave thirteen year old boys a bad name more often than not. Though if she listened to what Tucker said, Wash had made a fair attempt at torturing him into shape as a new C.O.  
She suspected that she shouldn’t listen to what Lavernius Tucker said.

It really was a very pretty place.  
“So much better than Blood Gulch,” Tucker sighed. “At least he got the chance to see this.”  
“It’s also a lot better than Sidewinder,” Tex remarked. “Nobody’s freezing their balls off.”  
While Church probably had more dead bodies to mourn over than anyone else ever did, his friends had somehow lost track of every single one of them, and so Carolina had stolen the memory capture unit one more time.  
She had no idea as to whether the U.N.S.C. would try to take the unit back. Stealing it had been more a spur of the moment action. They had nothing else of Church’s.  
Wash set the memory capture unit down on a bluff overlooking a dramatic dip in the landscape, the strange avians of Chorus calling out and scattering at their presence.  
“You scared the birds!” Caboose exclaimed at Wash.  
None of them were dressed for a funeral. Carolina was wearing her armor sans helmet, for the sake of Tex’s - Beta’s - presence. Lavernius was dressed in a comfortable, worn outfit of jeans and T-shirt, one he’d had from his earliest days of joining civilization on Chorus. Wash and Caboose were dressed along the same lines. Junior was wearing - well, Carolina had no clue how to judge Sangheili fashion and wasn’t going to try. She’d been a bit confused by Junior’s presence for this, but Tucker the elder had quickly assured her that Junior was True Blue. Hey, if a guy wanted to bring his giant mandibled alien son to a family event that would probably just bore him, more power to Lavernius, Carolina supposed. Tucker was carting Maine’s - his - helmet around under his arm with the reasoning that Church hadn’t missed any of his own funerals yet, why break the streak. He hadn’t said it wistfully, he’d said it with hurt rage simmering under his voice. And Carolina had noticed how very careful Wash had been to be in Tucker’s shadow after that remark, though she doubted that any of the sim troopers had.  
Carolina went back to the plane to snag the bottles of liquor she’d picked for the event. She knew how funerals were supposed to go. She’d attended a handful with her father before they’d both been consumed wholly by the Project. She vaguely remembered them being stiff, uncomfortable, and disingenuous.  
Alpha-Epsilon-Church might have deserved more than the Blood Gulch life that he’d been tossed into, but he deserved even less to have his memorium be anything that the original Leonard Church might have approved of. She figured that she’d let Lavernius take this one.  
Though she had brought some candles along anyway - Church deserved a not-jarhead touch to his funeral, too.  
“Sweet, drinks!” Tucker remarked, determined not to take his best friend’s funeral too seriously.

By the time that dusk was full upon them, they were all comfortably buzzed (except Junior, who’d been sternly warned away from partaking of human liquor by his dad, which surprised Carolina probably more than all the rest of it). When Carolina moved to light the candles that she’d arrayed around the memory capture unit, there was no hesitation in the eyes that followed her movements, only gravitas.  
“Wasn’t Church Jewish?” Tucker asked, mellow on drink and the evening.  
“He was always too busy with other things to practice it - and that means that I never learned exactly what it is I should do in a situation like this. I guess I should do some studying in my free time, not that it matters much now.”  
Tucker and Wash gave her near-identical looks, glinting through the shroud of their gentleness and impending inebriation. Trying to piece together that statement. Yeah, she figured that she’d have to spell it out for them - someday. Not tonight.  
“Does this make Church a gay Jewish robot?” Caboose remarked. Though his voice had been watery with unshed tears all evening, blue eyes suspiciously bright, for some reason this nonsensical observation seemed to cheer him.  
Tex scoffed. Every time a cloud moved across the low sun, she appeared to nearly fade out of existence, like an after-image.  
“Oh. Right. You are a girl robot. I forgot.”  
“I know,” Tex said. Somehow she tended to act less homicidal and more bright towards Caboose, Carolina had noticed that.  
“Can I please have some context for this?” That was Wash.  
“Church was a robot. Or is a robot. It is kind of confusing.”  
No felt much like reiterating it for him in that moment.  
“No, I mean why you thought Church was -”  
“Oh, I got this,” Tucker said. “When we first met Tex back at Blood Gulch, no one thought she was a girl - no offense, Tex. My money was on her being half-dude, half-shark. So I guess that we all thought Church was a gay robot, and also into bestiality, I guess, it’s just that even after Tex broke her voice modulator Caboose here, well, he’s Caboose.”  
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Beta said dangerously. “I’m a robot, remember? No lady parts. Just advanced technology.” ‘With which to squash you like a bug if you keep questioning my womanhood’ was left unsaid but rang out loud and clear regardless.  
“So I take it it’s time for embarrassing personal stories?” Wash queried.  
Tucker groaned and picked up another bottle of wine. “I’m not drunk enough for that yet. It’s no fun if he’s not here to get angry and asshole-ish about it.”  
They could all drink to that.

When the silence became heavy and began to seep into their bones, Tucker abruptly began eulogizing.  
“So. Church.” He kept his hands busy around his glass, and they all moved to sit more comfortably, turned expectant eyes on him. Maine’s helmet was set at his knee. “I hate doing this.” He spoke jarringly and jarred into uneven hesitance. “I … we all know that we’re having this funeral because Church didn’t think that I could run the Meta’s armor if he didn’t. Do the thing that he did. Maybe he was right. Looking back, I guess that we all sort of had to have faith in Church. Since we’re all here even if he isn’t, I guess that counts for a lot, even if,” Tucker took a deep breath, for a moment like he was drowning, “I’m really fucking pissed at him for costing me my best friend.”  
“He was my commanding officer for a long time, yeah, but I always just thought of him as that friend who always managed to make a bunch of shitty excuses for soldiers better - all-around better - without, well, even really killing any of us by the end. Yeah, the Director was a fucking dick. But I almost can’t hate the fact that he existed, because it meant that we got Church for a little while. So, yeah. I miss you, you asshole.”  
Tucker took another deep breath and pressed his hand to his face, scowling at himself to regain his composure. Carolina noticed that Caboose was crying quietly. She steeled herself to speak next.  
“I knew Church as a lot of people, but these last few years I knew him best as Epsilon. I’m grateful for the time he chose to spend with me. He called me ‘sis’, you know? I don’t know if he knew that I knew, but, for me - it’s been a long time since I’ve really worked closely - worked at all with anyone. And he was a mouthy little bastard, yeah, but even when I pushed him, and I knew him for a shorter time than any of you, he always had my back. It took me a while to realize just what that meant. I was lucky to ever meet him, and I like to think that I was important to him, too. Nowadays I’m surprised that that much good could ever have existed in the Director. Also, he was too in love with Tex to make any dirty jokes about being my ride-along no matter how much Tucker here tried to provoke him.” Carolina forced a laugh. “I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”  
From the corner of her eye, she saw Tex’s avatar staring at the ground.  
When Wash spoke, he was twisting his hands together and staring at the capture unit, expression closed and strange. “I guess it’s kind of a surprise that this isn’t my fault. Like Carolina, I knew the Director. I knew Epsilon before Caboose and the rest of his team brought him back.” Caboose paused in his quiet sniffling at that remark. Wash continued, voice on the edge of breaking. His words sounded painful. They had the impression that, given the choice, this would be just between Wash and Church. But Wash didn’t have that choice. “For so long, I thought that I was the only one who knew what had happened to Epsilon. I couldn’t really tell if I was doing what I was doing for him or for myself - and I still blame myself for that, a little bit, but what was done to him was done to the rest of my team, and I didn’t really think of it as any different. Your team is your family. Epsilon was my family. And I - I thought that if I found the Alpha, that if I put Humpty Dumpty together again, he’d make everything alright.” He took another long drink, eyes shining bright. “Looking back, I wish that I’d had more time with him. I wish we all did. I - when I went to destroy Freelancer, I thought that I’d do it alone and I thought that I wouldn’t be walking away from that. He proved me wrong on both. I - don’t think that he came back for my reasons, to end the Project that he probably barely understood once and for all. I think that he came back so that I didn’t have to do what I was doing alone. Just because it had something to do with what he was - what I was doing. Maybe because it had something to do with Tex.” He smiled a little bit wryly, like he wanted to believe that. “Still couldn’t let me have the last word. Claimed to be a ghost the entire time. And after that … you know what happened.” What I did, he didn’t say. “But he - worked with me, at the, at the end of all that. Saved my life and then gave me a new one. A better one. Definitely a better one. For awhile there I was so angry that I thought no one could ever prove me wrong about people, but Church - even if he drove me up the wall, I just wish he’d had more time. He deserved it more than I do and, well.” He offered an unsteady toast in the memory unit’s general direction, prop as it might have been. “To a damn good ghost.”  
After another teary silence; “Blargh blargh. Honk.”  
“Well said, Junior,” Tucker said with an audible sniffle.  
“I -” Tex started, like cutting a bullet from a wound. “I didn’t lo - hell, I didn’t even like Church at first. I’m pretty sure that you’ve all guessed this by now, but his memories of us getting engaged back on Earth were false. I guess the Director just couldn’t balls up and cut me off, even when I was a known rogue agent. That, or Alpha formed those fake memories on his own. When he was the Alpha, I never blamed him for any of it. I felt that he was the only one who might, possibly, have understood me - though I’ve never been grateful to the Director for giving him to me, and I never will. Church - I guess I kinda thought of him like a puppy at first? A remarkably resilient, smartass puppy. Funny. It was only when his meddling got me shot that I started to think maybe he was his own person after all. Because he’d just got me shot. Princess Allison.” She spat the words, like she’d tried to tear them with her teeth. “Fucked up the Director’s favorite project. Yeah, sure, he never questioned whether or not he had a place in my life. Even if that place was trying to set things up from the sidelines for me, which, well, that never worked out. So surprising. Except if what I wanted to do was steal Junior’s kid or work with the Meta. Yeah, what he did then was some of the least Director shit that I’ve ever seen. But - I never questioned that he was gonna be in my life, either. And I shouldn’t be surprised that his infatuation with me was so strong, but I was surprised when he turned out to be an alright guy this time around. And I’m not a good person. So he could have held his breath forever on that part impressing me, but to have some smart-assed son of a bitch there each time I needed the help chipping away at all of that insanity, whether I’d ask for it or not - I got used to it. Yeah, I cared for him. It was - I hate to say it, but there’s no point in not saying it; it was bigger than me. Bigger than either of us, even if I’m not sure that either of us really understood the whole thing. And I can’t say that I didn’t appreciate Church’s love for getting knocked around by me some every time he could,” she added slyly. “I’m glad that he found a family in you idiots. Maybe I don’t agree with Washington and say that all amends have been made - but Church was a good man, better than any of us could have expected him to be. And I wish he had more time. And you’d better believe that I’d do whatever I had to to give him that, if I could.”  
Tex’s avatar was a reflection in ink against the dynamic shadows of the sleeping planet, gossamer and nymph-like, Queen of Air and Darkness while she talked. But something overcame her when she finished speaking, and she walked the air back to Carolina’s shoulder to sit, mimicking the slumped, introspective posture of the rest of the loose group.  
“Caboose?” Wash asked softly. “Do you have anything that you want to say about Church?”  
Caboose startled and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “I. Uh. Yeah. Church was a good friend, and always knew what was going on, but I am not worried because Wash is a good captain and also I have another Church inside my head, because Church had to look for O’Malley in there. I was glad that Church was my captain back in Blood Gulch so that I did not die from the Reds. But it’s OK, because I am in charge of remembering him, and I already did such a good job with soccer ball Church. He’s not really gone.” Caboose stopped, and thought. “He’s - he’s just not here right now.”

“And I guess then someone else can be in charge of remembering him, in case I forget or get distracted or have to be in charge of remembering someone else because if I was I might get parts of them mixed up, so that everyone will always know that I am Church’s best friend. And I have to keep telling stories where Sarge is a pirate because that is my job. And you always do what your best friend says. I don’t mind, though.”


End file.
